


Quarantine

by westolethelight (Llama)



Category: The Libertines
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama/pseuds/westolethelight
Summary: Quarantined for a week back in the old Albion Rooms, our heroes need to learn how to get along without their usual safety valves. Luckily Peter is full of ideas...
Relationships: Carl Barat/Pete Doherty
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41
Collections: Peter and Carl fics to lift our spirits during self-isolation





	Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following tumblr prompt: A fic of the boys quarantined together in the early days of the original Albion rooms and what they’d get up to alone together for an indefinite period of time.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is what the prompter was looking for, I just let it go where it wanted. Um, yeah. Mildly smutty, by my standards anyway. Depicts emotional pain and a little physical pain (biting, scratching etc.) too.

Peter brings the news home with him from the corner shop: quarantine. One week. The whole country, and especially London where the risk is greatest. It's bad out there, bad enough that he lugged three bags of supplies back from the shop, spent every last penny they had.

Miraculously, there's even some food in there.

"Well, _fuck_."

Peter nods solemnly like he's supposed to, but he's pretty excited about it, actually. Shut up in the Albion Rooms full-time with just Carl, the rest of the world forced to fuck off and leave them alone? He has no problem with that. 

Carl, predictably, works himself up into a right state, and is pacing like a caged tiger after a couple of hours, but Peter has a whole list of ways to distract him. He doesn't know if it will last them the week, but he's game to try. 

He starts with a gentle hand on Carl's shoulder, a quick massage of the muscle and running his fingers up the side of his neck. 

"Mmmmmmm."

Carl twists his body round to get his hands on Peter too, and they stumble towards the bedroom.  
They're a quarter of the way through Peter's list before they make it there, which is... unexpected. They're almost halfway through it before Peter thinks maybe he could do with a nap before the next round.

Carl seems to have other ideas.

"You want some more?" Peter chuckles, fumbling under the sheets that are twisted all around them and finding Carl getting hard yet again. "I'm not sure my wrists are up to going again after all that heavy shopping."

"I can work with that," Carl growls, and Peter's laughing, pressed down into the mattress as Carl's fingers work their way inside him. 

They're tangled together when Peter wakes up. 

He loves these moments. The soft haze of dawn casting a glow over the room, over the bed. Carl's hair spilling across the pillow, his face relaxed in sleep. Sheets and quilt piled over them haphazardly, cocooning them.

The world's always had too many sharp edges for Peter.

When he was younger, he spent hours daydreaming about his future lovers. Love would protect him. Love would be soft, love would be there to cushion him from the world. He could do that for someone else too; twirl them off into their own little paradise and they'd shield each other from the relentless bombardment of real life. 

But love, when it crashed messily into his life in the shape of a dark-haired, sulky-faced, blue-eyed boy, wasn't anything like he'd imagined. It wasn't falling gently back onto a feather bed. It wasn't, and isn't, an endless dance, laughing and smiling into each other's eyes. Most of the time it's more like dropping at heart-stopping speed into a pit, screaming as the spikes at the bottom impale him. It's tearing his shredded body off the spikes, climbing out and doing it all over again, because there's no alternative. He can't have the joy, the exhilaration of this love, without a measure of pain.

Carl is his. He is Carl's. Everything else, everyone else is just... padding. Filler. And sometimes, the protection they need from each other. The world has too many sharp edges for Peter, so of course he found the most sharp-edged boy to fall in love with. 

This love he has, that he will defend with his life, is at least half the time fighting and screaming and running off into the night. Sometimes accompanied by sirens. But it's also 'Sorry' and 'Shhh' and sharing a little something sweet until Carl unwinds, is coaxed into a tender smile Peter likes to think only he ever sees. It's fucking, sweaty and desperate, or fuzzy and slow, one day bleeding into the next until suddenly Carl's lost another job and Peter's been dumped by another girlfriend.

Speaking of which... apparently the theatre is closed until further notice, and Lynne – Leanne? Whatever, her handwriting is appalling – is really pissed off with Peter and hopes his dick falls off before he dies of the plague.

"Didn't like her anyway," Carl says, and Peter bites his shoulder a little too hard, because he didn't like Carl having a job, but he didn't _say_ so.

Well, not often.

It blows up then, of course. Another stupid, pointless fight Peter provokes just because he can, because Carl sparks into such explosive life with conflict, is so easy to wind up and up and up until he snaps. He's never won a fight with Carl and he never will. It always ends like this, with Carl's wiry arm muscles taut, victory in his grim smile, and Peter helpless underneath him, knowing Carl is too strong for him, knowing there's always a knife in reach, or a bottle. Knowing Carl could really hurt him. 

Knowing there's a little bit of Carl that wants to. Knowing that Carl knows there's a little bit of Peter that wants him to as well.

"Do it," he gasps out, because he's not going to beg for mercy. "Just fuckin' do it."

Carl never has, because he knows there are easier ways to hurt Peter, ways that don't send them down a path they may never come back from. Normally all Peter gets is the sound of a door slamming. 

That isn't an option right now. This is brand new territory.

Peter moves first. He's not surrendering, he's just... opening negotiations. He unclenches his hands, rests his open palms back against the pillow.

Carl's eyes narrow as he watches, but he loosens his grip on Peter's wrists, just a little. Enough to remove most of the discomfort.

Okay then.

Peter licks his lips. Carl's still watching him, that's good. Slowly, carefully, he twists his head just enough to graze Carl's hand with his teeth. 

Long dark hair brushes across Peter's face as Carl leans in and scrapes his teeth down Peter's neck, bites down gently just above his collarbone.

Then again, harder.

Peter doesn't _like_ pain, but a shudder runs through him from head to toe. 

Carl looks at him with a speculative gleam in his eye, then carefully rubs his stubbled chin over Peter's soft cheeks, his inner arms, his belly, apparently delighted at the flush of red it creates. He bites down on muscle and sucks on soft flesh where he can find it, making pretty patterns up and down Peter's body. He pinches and scratches and tests, watches Peter's reactions, drinks in his little gasps and moans. He smiles when Peter jumps and twitches, wide-eyed and quivering with anticipation, but unable to tear his eyes away from Carl.

He tickles the raw spots with his hair, just to tease and torment a little more. Peter is _entranced_. 

Carl doesn't need a weapon. His whole body _is_ one. 

"I think we might get through this," Carl says later. Much later. He's crashed out with his eyes shut against the encroaching light. Peter thinks they may need to throw a blanket over the window if they're going to spend this much time in bed while they're quarantined. He might do that, when he can move again.

"Mmm."

"As long as you got stuff we can actually eat." Carl opens one eye and squints at him. "You bought food, right? Edible food."

Peter's never going to live down the eel steaks and custard fiasco. Which is unfair, because they were on _offer_ , and experiments are always worth a try. Today's worked out pretty well for everyone concerned.

"'Course," he says. It was mostly cake, but that's food, right? 

He smiles to himself as they settle back down to sleep, wrapped up in their cocoon again. Carl will probably make a drama out of the food thing later, but that's okay. Peter has a whole lot more items on his list to distract him with now. 

He just hopes his body can last out the week.


End file.
